Article
The Tragedy of Having to Fight Those We Love
January 18, 2006
TR: Not really. My poetry is about women and kids and birds and seasons and current events – and yes, I suppose, men. I see men as an oppositional category in some ways. I believe they lack something fundamental that women possess: the nurturing impulse. You can find it in eunuchs maybe, but not in men. As a result they are more egotistical and self-absorbed than women. Things are changing for the better between the sexes, of course. But I do believe being a woman is related to many values that I cherish: compassion, peace, harmony, the need to resolve conflicts. This probably permeates my poetry.
AS: I enjoy the complexity of tones in your poetry: the ability to move from the confrontational to the vulnerable in a single poem, for instance.
TR: I’ve always believed in the primacy of women, not the mere equality of the sexes. That premise informs my work. I don’t see the woman’s lot as one of mere misery. A woman is not a mere sacrificial goat; she has agency and volition and that belief enters the work as well. But while there’s rage, there’s also the fact that I still love men. I call myself a Draupadi with three men: my husband and two sons. And so there’s the deeper realisation that there’s no point turning this relationship into a World Wrestling tournament. This is our greatest tragedy, isn’t it? The fact that we have to fight those we love.
AS: You turned to poetry relatively late in your writing career. Why is that?
TR: Actually, the first poem I wrote was on failing a math exam in school. So poetry has always been a form I’ve enjoyed and practised. When I moved to Delhi from Srinagar in the early 90s, I was writing prose and poetry. But I decided to focus on the short story, on the advice of one of my seniors at All India Radio. It was sometime in 1996, I think, that I met a senior poet who said that the only writer he knew who could do both prose and poetry effectively was Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi. To me this was an instant challenge. I wanted to prove that a woman writer could achieve the same degree of excellence in both genres. Now I do both, and I find both activities complement each other perfectly. Some moments work themselves into poems, others into fiction. The challenge in both is craft: even in my short fiction, I don’t allow myself a single extra sentence.
AS: There is a particularly strong tradition of love poetry in Urdu literature. How do you see your work in relation to this?
TR: There is a lot of fine poetry being written in Urdu today. Some of it can entail unexamined romanticism or crude feminism. But there’s a lot of good work as well. Personally, I don’t believe true or unconditional love between the sexes exists at all. Certainly I’ve never known it. Infatuation is something I’ve known, but that’s something else altogether. All the men I’ve known have been insecure about women who are more intelligent, attractive or talented than them. So there’s never anything excessive or sentimental in the poetry I write. Romanticism is something that won’t find in my work.
Recently, I’ve started writing ghazals as well. As you know, the ghazal is traditionally associated with the male voice enumerating the attributes of beautiful women. It talks about eyes, gait, hair and lips, never about breasts and bums. But in the last thirty or forty years, many poets have used the ghazal form to talk about other things. In my ghazal I allow my entire world to enter: birds, babies, flowers, gender, ego battles, the problems faced by women in the Kashmir valley in these difficult times, and much more.
AS: Would you like to say something about your approach to craft?
TR: The challenge I set myself is not to repeat a single word or idea in a poem. My poems are brief, precise, economical. The attempt is to integrate the impulses of the heart and the mind, the self and society in a few highly truncated lines. All superfluity is weeded out. I use free verse, but rhythm is important to me. I don’t work with prose poetry at all. And above all, I want to provoke the reader into thinking things out for himself or herself. A poem should be suggestive, tantalising, not like an arithmetical equation. It shouldn’t provide all the answers.
AS: Who are the other Urdu writers whose work you enjoy?
TR: Among my seniors, I like Qurat-ul-ain Hyder in fiction, Ahmad Nadeem Qasimi (from Pakistan) in fiction and poetry, Ashfaq Ahmed (also from Pakistan) in fiction. And of course, there’s Gulzar in India whose fiction and poetry I admire. Among contemporary fiction writers, there’s Syed Mohammad Ashraf and Tariq Chhattari from India. In the current poetry scene, the writers I think highly of are Naseer Ahmad Nasir (from Pakistan) and Shehnaz Nabi (from India).
April 2005
Urdu poet Tarannum Riyaz talks to PIW editor Arundhathi Subramaniam about her refusal to write a love poetry of treacle and sentiment.
AS: Are there any recurrent themes in your poetry? TR: Not really. My poetry is about women and kids and birds and seasons and current events – and yes, I suppose, men. I see men as an oppositional category in some ways. I believe they lack something fundamental that women possess: the nurturing impulse. You can find it in eunuchs maybe, but not in men. As a result they are more egotistical and self-absorbed than women. Things are changing for the better between the sexes, of course. But I do believe being a woman is related to many values that I cherish: compassion, peace, harmony, the need to resolve conflicts. This probably permeates my poetry.
AS: I enjoy the complexity of tones in your poetry: the ability to move from the confrontational to the vulnerable in a single poem, for instance.
TR: I’ve always believed in the primacy of women, not the mere equality of the sexes. That premise informs my work. I don’t see the woman’s lot as one of mere misery. A woman is not a mere sacrificial goat; she has agency and volition and that belief enters the work as well. But while there’s rage, there’s also the fact that I still love men. I call myself a Draupadi with three men: my husband and two sons. And so there’s the deeper realisation that there’s no point turning this relationship into a World Wrestling tournament. This is our greatest tragedy, isn’t it? The fact that we have to fight those we love.
AS: You turned to poetry relatively late in your writing career. Why is that?
TR: Actually, the first poem I wrote was on failing a math exam in school. So poetry has always been a form I’ve enjoyed and practised. When I moved to Delhi from Srinagar in the early 90s, I was writing prose and poetry. But I decided to focus on the short story, on the advice of one of my seniors at All India Radio. It was sometime in 1996, I think, that I met a senior poet who said that the only writer he knew who could do both prose and poetry effectively was Ahmed Nadeem Qasimi. To me this was an instant challenge. I wanted to prove that a woman writer could achieve the same degree of excellence in both genres. Now I do both, and I find both activities complement each other perfectly. Some moments work themselves into poems, others into fiction. The challenge in both is craft: even in my short fiction, I don’t allow myself a single extra sentence.
AS: There is a particularly strong tradition of love poetry in Urdu literature. How do you see your work in relation to this?
TR: There is a lot of fine poetry being written in Urdu today. Some of it can entail unexamined romanticism or crude feminism. But there’s a lot of good work as well. Personally, I don’t believe true or unconditional love between the sexes exists at all. Certainly I’ve never known it. Infatuation is something I’ve known, but that’s something else altogether. All the men I’ve known have been insecure about women who are more intelligent, attractive or talented than them. So there’s never anything excessive or sentimental in the poetry I write. Romanticism is something that won’t find in my work.
Recently, I’ve started writing ghazals as well. As you know, the ghazal is traditionally associated with the male voice enumerating the attributes of beautiful women. It talks about eyes, gait, hair and lips, never about breasts and bums. But in the last thirty or forty years, many poets have used the ghazal form to talk about other things. In my ghazal I allow my entire world to enter: birds, babies, flowers, gender, ego battles, the problems faced by women in the Kashmir valley in these difficult times, and much more.
AS: Would you like to say something about your approach to craft?
TR: The challenge I set myself is not to repeat a single word or idea in a poem. My poems are brief, precise, economical. The attempt is to integrate the impulses of the heart and the mind, the self and society in a few highly truncated lines. All superfluity is weeded out. I use free verse, but rhythm is important to me. I don’t work with prose poetry at all. And above all, I want to provoke the reader into thinking things out for himself or herself. A poem should be suggestive, tantalising, not like an arithmetical equation. It shouldn’t provide all the answers.
AS: Who are the other Urdu writers whose work you enjoy?
TR: Among my seniors, I like Qurat-ul-ain Hyder in fiction, Ahmad Nadeem Qasimi (from Pakistan) in fiction and poetry, Ashfaq Ahmed (also from Pakistan) in fiction. And of course, there’s Gulzar in India whose fiction and poetry I admire. Among contemporary fiction writers, there’s Syed Mohammad Ashraf and Tariq Chhattari from India. In the current poetry scene, the writers I think highly of are Naseer Ahmad Nasir (from Pakistan) and Shehnaz Nabi (from India).
April 2005
© Arundhathi Subramaniam
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